Wheel Alignment

Watch for a pull to one side on a straight, level road, a steering wheel that is off-center while driving straight, uneven or feathered tire wear, or a vehicle that feels vague and wanders at freeway speed. Also get it checked after any hard impact with a pothole or curb, even if nothing feels different yet.

No, and they fix different symptoms. Alignment sets the angles at which the wheels meet the road, which affects pulling and tire wear. Balancing corrects weight distribution around a spinning wheel and tire, which affects vibration. A vibration that appears around highway speed is a balance issue; a pull or a chewed tire edge is alignment.

There is no universal mileage interval. Get one when you install new tires so they start out wearing evenly, after suspension or steering work, after hitting something hard, and any time the symptoms above appear. Otherwise an alignment check during routine service is enough.

If the wheel is crooked because toe settings are off, yes, and centering the wheel is part of doing the job properly. If a previous repair left a steering component installed incorrectly, that gets corrected first. Either way the fix starts with measuring rather than adjusting by feel.

Quickly. A toe setting out by a small amount drags the tread sideways every foot the vehicle travels, and it can scrub a new tire down to the cords in a few thousand miles. Alignment is one of the few services that pays for itself in tire life alone.

Yes. Our bay and lifts are sized for rigs that a smaller shop cannot take, and alignment matters more on a heavy vehicle, because a misaligned motorhome wanders in crosswinds and eats expensive tires. Call with the chassis and length so we can schedule the right bay.

A pull that survives a correct alignment usually traces to tires rather than angles, either uneven pressure, a belt shifted inside a tire, or mismatched wear front to back. Brake drag on one side can also mimic it. Those are the next things to check, and the alignment printout helps rule the angles out.